Library:Trotsky and the Military Conspiracy

Trotsky and the Military Conspiracy: Soviet and Non-Soviet Evidence Evidence; with the Complete Transcript of the "Tukhachevsky Affair" Trial is a 2021 book by historian Grover Furr, published by Erythros Press and Media.

Acknowledgements and Dedication

I wish to express my gratitude to Kevin Prendergast, Arthur Hudson – Arthur, may you enjoy your well-deserved retirement! — and Siobhan McCarthy, the skilled and tireless Inter-Library Loan librarians at Harry S. Sprague Library, Montclair State University.

Without their help, my research would simply not be possible. With their continued help, I can persevere.

I would like to recognise Montclair State University for giving me a sabbatical leave in the fall semester of 2015, and special research travel funds in 2017, 2019, and 2020, which have been invaluable in my research on this book.

This book is dedicated to

Ушкалов Вячеслав Николаевич

Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Ushkalov

The Authorship of This Book

This book is the result of a collective effort. The research has been done primarily by Vladimir L. Bobrov, of Moscow, and secondarily by me, Grover Furr.

Since before he first contacted me in March, 1999, Vladimir Bobrov has been diligently scouring published materials in order to identify and collect primary source evidence and scholarship on the Tukhachevsky Affair. During the past decade, he and a colleague have spent countless hours in the archive of the Federal Security Service, where the records of the former NKVD are stored, locating, reading, and transcribing by hand a great many primary source documents concerning the military conspiracy.

Vladimir has also carefully read and critiqued drafts of this book. I have included most, if not all, of his suggestions in the final text. Without his work, the present book would not have been possible.

Sven-Eric Holström has ably translated the entire transcript of the trial of the defendants in the "Tukhachevsky Affair." I have carefully studied this translation and made a small number of changes.

I have written the text of the book and am responsible for the final draft.

Grover Furr

Montclair, NJ USA

25 November 2020

Foreword: How to Read This Book

The principal document presented here is the complete translation of the transcript of the trial of the defendants in the "Tukhachevsky Affair" – Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky and his seven co-defendants, all top-ranking Red Army officers.

Read this text carefully and – preferably – several times.

Properly understood, this document, and this book, overturn the mainstream history of the Soviet Union, of World War II, and also, in a number of important respects, of the world in the twentieth century.

The other chapters contain confirmatory evidence, with careful and appropriate analysis. They are important, because dishonest historians will claim that Tukhachevsky et al. were not guilty; rather that they were "framed." They will further claim that Leon Trotsky, who is deeply implicated in the Military Conspiracy, was also "framed." These claims are demonstrably false. This book presents the evidence. So these chapters are important.

But read the text carefully. Objective, discerning readers will see for themselves.

Introduction - The Tukhachevsky Affair

On 10 June 1937, the front page of The New York Times broke the story with the following headline:

PURGE OF RED ARMY HINTED IN REMOVAL OF FOUR GENERALS

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Five Commands Are Changed, Causing Belief Momentous Events Are Occurring

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TUKHACHEVSKY IS OUSTED

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Former Marshal Is Thought to Be Under Arrest With Other High Officers

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TALK OF COUP DISCOUNTED Marshal Budyonny, Close Friend of Stalin, Is Appointed Head of Moscow Military District

Subheads in the body of the article gave more of the shocking details:

Rumors of Arrests Reinforced

All Distinguished Officers

PURGE OF RED ARMY HINTED IN OUSTINGS

Purges Baffle Diplomats

From the beginning, the guilt of the arrested commanders was widely doubted. On 12 June, Leon Trotsky, living in exile in Mexico, once again predicted Stalin's doom:

TROTSKY SEES STALIN NEAR END OF REIGN Says Interests of Defense Have Yielded to Attempts to Save 'the Ruling Clique'

Trotsky was lying. He himself and his supporters outside and especially inside the Soviet Union, were deeply implicated in this conspiracy which, as we shall see, was a joint military-civilian affair. Indeed, Trotsky himself was one of its leaders.

What Happened

During May, 1937, an undetermined number of officers of the Red Army (formal name: Workers and Peasants Red Army, Russian initials RKKA) were arrested in connection with the investigation of a conspiracy involving high-ranking military officers, together with civilian co-conspirators, to sabotage the Red Army and Soviet defences; open the front in the event of war with hostile powers; and to arrest and/or assassinate Soviet leaders, including Stalin and Marshal Kliment E. Voroshilov, People's Commissar for Defence.

The officers of the highest rank who were ultimately tried, convicted, and executed on 11-12 June 1937, were:

Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky, one of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union. Tukhachevsky was arrested on 22 May 1937.

Yona Emmanuilovich Yakir, Komandarm 1st rank, arrested on 28 May 1937.

Yeronim Petrovich Uborevich, Komandarm 1st rank, arrested on 29 May 1937.

Avgust Ivanovich Kork, Komandarm 2nd rank, arrested on 12 May 1937.

Robert Petrovich Eideman, Komkor, arrested on 22 May 1937.

Vitovt Kasimirovich Putna, Komkor, arrested on 20 August 1936.

Boris Mironovich Fel'dman, Komkor, arrested on 15 May 1937.

Vitalii Markovich Primakov, Komkor, arrested on 14 August 1936.

Putna had been named by defendants in the second Moscow Trial of January, 1937, as a secret Trotskyist conspirator within the army. Putna had also been mentioned in the first Moscow Trial of August, 1936.

On 20 May 1937, Yan Borisovich Gamarnik, Army Commissar 1st rank, was removed from his post as Chief of the Political Directorate of the Army. On 30 May 1937, the Politburo dismissed him from his military positions because of his "close group ties with Yakir, now expelled from the Party for participation in a military-fascist conspiracy." On 31 May 1937, two officers, acting under Voroshilov's orders, visited Gamarnik at his apartment to inform him that he was being dismissed from the army. When they left, Gamarnik committed suicide by gunshot.

Interrogations of the eight accused continued throughout the last part of May until the trial, which took place on 11 June 1937.

Meanwhile, between 1 June and 4 June 1937, an enlarged session of the Military Soviet (Council) with the People's Commissar for Defence was held in Moscow. The transcript of the discussions was published in 2008. Its purpose was to explain to high-ranking military officers the evidence against the eight commanders in what would come to be known as the "Tukhachevsky Affair;" to present them with that evidence in written form; and to hear what they had to say about it.

The documents presented, evidently in multiple copies, to the officers who attended the Military Soviet, are listed in the transcript of the enlarged session of the Military Soviet. On 1 June 1937, the first day of the meeting, the officers in attendance, 173 of them, were given copies of the confession statements of Tukhachevsky, Kork, Fel'dman, and Yefimov. Other materials may have been distributed after 1 June – an excerpt from a 2 June 1937 confession by Putna is included in the published transcript of the session of the Military Soviet. As of 2020, most of the investigative materials are now available to researchers at the FSB archive in Moscow.

Interrogators of and confessions by these eight men evidently continued right up until 10 June 1937, the day before the trial. On 11 June the eight former commanders were put on trial by a military court consisting of high-ranking officers. The accused and the judges were all well acquainted with one another. The presiding judge was Vasilii Vasil'evich Ul'rikh, an Old Bolshevik and a trained and experienced jurist.

The trial took place on 11 June 1937. All eight defendants confessed, were convicted, and sentenced to execution. They were shot on 12 June 1937. The transcript of this trial is the primary document presented in the present book.

Soviet Archival Documents

Since the end of the Soviet Union in late December, 1991, a great many documents from former Soviet archives have been published. Beginning as a relative trickle, a decade later the total number of former Soviet documents published had become a flood, one that continues until the present day. These documents demand a complete revision of the history of the Soviet Union during the time when Joseph Stalin was in the leadership, roughly 1929 to 1953.

In Russia today there is a law according to which secret documents are to be made public after the passage of 75 years. 2012 marked seventy-five years since the Tukhachevsky Affair. By 2012, many interrogations, statements, and confessions of military men accused of involvement in the military-civilian conspiracy had indeed been declassified.

In 2015 historian Vladimir L. Bobrov, together with a colleague, applied to the archive of the FSB, the agency that is the direct descendent of the OGPU-NKVD-KGB, to request that the transcript of the Tukhachevsky trial be declassified and made available for study. The FSB archive refused, stating that the case was still under investigation by the prosecutor's office.

The Trial Transcript Declassified

In May 2018, a copy of the trial transcript held in a different archive, RGASPI, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, was silently published by being placed on two web pages, one in Ukraine, the other in Russia. This is the text we present here, in English translation. We still do not have access to the copy held in the FSB archive.

The trial transcript is contained in several different archival volumes. Volume 16 ("tom 16") is the first typewritten transcript of the handwritten transcripts recorded by stenographers. It contains only light editing. Volume 17 ("tom 17"), also a typescript of the transcript, contains copious revisions in blue, red, green ink and pencil. The version from the RGASPI archive, which we translate here, is a retyped version of volume 17.

Other Arrests and Trials of Military Men

The trial transcript makes it clear that many other officers were involved in this conspiracy. Today there is a massive amount of evidence to this effect – so much, indeed, that a multi-volume set would be needed to contain it all. We will cover a very small part of this evidence in some of the chapters in this book.

A great many officers were either charged with serious crimes or dismissed from the military under a cloud of suspicion. A significant number were put on trial and either executed or sentenced to terms in a labour camp. Some were acquitted. Others were arrested, held during an investigation, and ultimately released.

A great deal of material has now been declassified and is available to researchers. It is likely that all, or almost all, of the investigative materials on thousands of officers who were under investigation, is still extant and could be accessed and studied by researchers.

But it appears that there is very little research being conducted on these men, or on the subject of the military conspiracy generally.

The main reason for this neglect is the fact that the question of the military conspiracy is widely considered a "closed book." Tukhachevsky and his seven co-defendants have long since been declared to have been innocent victims of a frame-up by Stalin. There is no indication that the mainstream historical profession in Russia or elsewhere is willing to revisit these events, regardless of how much evidence of their guilt we now have.

The Anti-Stalin Paradigm

Refusal to be objective – to consider the possibility that not just the Tukhachevsky Affair defendants, but many other military officers, may have indeed been guilty, to decide the matter of guilt or innocent on the basis of evidence rather than of preconceived ideas, outright bias, or political expediency – is a product of the anticommunism, in the form of anti-Stalinism.

Leon Trotsky did his best to demonise Stalin – to accuse him of every conceivable crime, always without any evidence – in order to further his, Trotsky's, own anti-Soviet conspiracies and his collaboration with Nazi Germany and militarist Japan, and with fascists, German spies, and his own followers within the Soviet Union. After Stalin's death Nikita Khrushchev falsely accused Stalin of many crimes in his famous "Secret Speech" to the XX Party Congress of 25 February 1956. Thanks to evidence from former Soviet archives we now know that all of Khrushchev's accusations against Stalin in that speech are false, most of them deliberate lies.

At the XXII Party Congress in October, 1961, Khrushchev sponsored further accusations against Stalin, some of them citing evidence that we can now show was false. After the XXII Congress, Khrushchev sponsored a virtual avalanche of dishonest writings, disguised as history but devoid of evidence, in which Stalin was accused of yet more crimes. This wave of anti-Stalin fabrications ceased shortly after Khrushchev was ousted in October, 1964.

Beginning in 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union, launched an even more fierce attack on Stalin, again with the aid of phony historians and with either falsified evidence or no evidence at all. This last anti-Stalin onslaught has continued to the present day.

The unwritten rules of this Anti-Stalin Paradigm (ASP) include the following: It is considered illegitimate to question Stalin's guilt in any crime he has been charged with in the past, regardless of the evidence now available. Confirmation bias, "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms or support one's prior beliefs or values," trumps evidence, trumps the truth, trumps everything.

In 1956, shortly after his "Secret Speech," Khrushchev assigned a commission under the chairmanship of Vyacheslav Molotov, a long-time close associate of Stalin's, to investigate some of the crimes that Khrushchev had accused Stalin of. The Molotov Commission included a few other longtime Stalin supporters, but also some Khrushchev loyalists. The result was that the commission could not agree that the defendants in the three Moscow Trials had been innocent. But it did "rehabilitate" the principal defendants in the Tukhachevsky Affair, although it cited no evidence in doing so.

Just prior to the XXII Party Congress Khrushchev appointed another commission under the chairmanship of another Old Bolshevik, Nikolai Shvernik, and composed solely of Khrushchev loyalists and Stalin-haters. This commission investigated the Tukhachevsky Affair again, and again found the defendants innocent. Once again, they were unable to find any evidence of innocence, and were forced to falsify the evidence that they did cite. We examine some of the falsifications of the Shvernik Commission in the present book.

My Road to the Tukhachevsky Affair

I first became interested in the Tukhachevsky Affair in the 1970s. At a huge demonstration in Manhattan in 1967 against the U.S. Invasion of Vietnam, I was told by a friendly but clearly anticommunist onlooker that I should not oppose the American war in Vietnam. Why not? I asked. Because – came the answer – the Vietnamese nationalists were led by the Communist Party, the Communist Party was led by Ho Chi Minh, Ho had been trained by Joseph Stalin, and "Stalin had murdered 20 million people."

I did not believe this – but neither did I disbelieve or dismiss it. In 1968 Robert Conquest published The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the 'Thirties. I was still curious about the claim that Stalin was a mass murderer, so in the early 1970s I read Conquest's book very carefully. From my study of mediaeval literature, I knew not to take the fact-claims of "experts" on trust, but to always scrutinise the primary-source evidence. So I paid particularly close attention to Conquest's footnotes – where the evidence is. Or, rather, where it is supposed to be.

I had a contradictory reaction to Conquest's book. On the one hand, I was shocked and troubled by the enormous number of accusations of terrible crimes that Conquest levelled at Stalin. On the other hand, I noted that Conquest cited little – if indeed any – primary-source evidence to support his sweeping allegations against Stalin and the Soviets.

Once I was securely situated in my new college teaching job and had completed most of the research for my doctoral dissertation, I set about checking Conquest's book further with the resources of the New York Public Library. I created a 3x5 file card for every citation that Conquest used in The Great Terror and I systematically checked all of them. What I discovered was enlightening. Conquest had no primary source evidence. All of the materials he cited as "evidence" were assertions by Soviet or Western anticommunist writers. I noted especially the fact that the Soviet references also had no evidence.

When I completed by doctoral dissertation in 1978, I determined that I would do some serious research on the "Great Terror." I decided to concentrate on the Tukhachevsky Affair because it seemed to me that there was more information available about it than about the other alleged "crimes of Stalin" in Conquest's book. I began to collect articles and books, and to make notes.

In 1980 I obtained a copy of J. Arch Getty's doctoral dissertation, which he had completed at Boston College the previous year. I read it with enthusiasm. Here was a younger scholar who really knew how to use evidence, and who saw through many of the falsifications that were spread around as "truth" by mainstream scholars like Conquest.

I met Getty, and he suggested that I draft an article for a journal, Russian History / Histoire Russe, for which he was one of the editors. I did this, and after many rewrites, Getty recommended it for publication. But the publisher of the journal, Charles Schlacks, rejected my article on the grounds that "it made Stalin look good." Of course, my article did not do that at all. But it did conclude that the accepted version of Tukhachevsky's innocence was not supported by any evidence, and that in fact we did not know whether Tukhachevsky was innocent or not. The publisher found such responsible, scholarly caution to be unacceptable.

But Getty stood up for my article. He told the publisher that it must be published, because it had gone through a very careful vetting by himself and some colleagues. The publisher backed down. But when the article was published, in 1988 (the issue is dated 1986), the prefatory essay to the issue contained an introductory paragraph discussing every article – except mine! This was my first exposure to what I now call the Anti-Stalin Paradigm.

In 1996 I learnt how to create a simple web page. On it I put retyped versions of all the articles I had published by that time, including the 1986/88 article on Tukhachevsky. In March 1999 I received an email from Vladimir L'vovich Bobrov in Moscow about my article. He told me the article was good but that it should be updated by the study of some of the many documents from former Soviet archives that had begun to appear in Russia.

Vladimir had been collecting and retyping documents related to the Tukhachevsky Affair and generously shared them with me. He wanted us to write an article or a book about it. I agreed, and for a while I did some work on it. But then I stumbled across evidence that Nikita Khrushchev had lied – indeed, had virtually done nothing but lie – in his famous "Secret Speech." So I stopped working on Tukhachevsky and began years of researching and writing on other important questions of Soviet history of the Stalin period, beginning with Khrushchev Lied.

In 2007-8 I undertook a systematic review of all the documents in the Volkogonov Archive pertaining to the Stalin years. I discovered a report by Marshal Semyon Budyonny to Marshal Voroshilov in which Budyonny, a member of the judicial panel, describes the Tukhachevsky trial. This document was classified – secret, unavailable to researchers – in Russia at that time. In 2012 Vladimir and I published this document in the St. Petersburg historical journal Klio. Our article, including our analysis of Budyonny's letter and how it has been dishonestly described over the years, is also available online, though only in Russian.

Now that the transcript of the trial has been made public, along with a great many other documents relating to the military conspiracy, it is time to return to the Tukhachevsky Affair.

— Grover Furr, 2020

The Trial Transcript

The main feature of this book is the presentation of a complete English translation of the transcript of the trial of Tukhachevsky and his seven co-conspirators. This translation was expertly done by my Swedish colleague and fine historian Sven-Eric Holström. I take responsibility for its accuracy, since I have gone over it and corrected it on some minor points.

Annotations to the Transcript

Within the transcript itself I have included footnotes to clarify some issues. In addition, there is one chapter on the "Spravka" (report) of Shvernik Commission, set up by Khrushchev to whitewash Tukhachevsky et al. This chapter is not an exhaustive study of the Spravka – it is far too long, and there are far too many lies and fabrications in it. Rather, this chapter only covers the parts of the Spravka that deal directly with the trial transcript.

There are two chapters on books that lie about the Tukhachevsky Affair. These chapters are very far from exhaustive – all books by mainstream historians that mention the trial lie about it. I have chosen these specific books as exemplary.

Confirmatory Evidence

There follows six chapters on Soviet evidence and three chapters on non-Soviet evidence that confirms the existence of the military conspiracy. I have selected only evidence that I regard as unimpeachable – that cannot have been fabricated or faked. Much of this evidence has been available for years.

In fact, there has never been any evidentiary reason to doubt the existence of this conspiracy. Neither Khrushchev's nor Gorbachev's writers, nor any scholars or writers outside the Soviet Union, have ever presented any evidence that Tukhachevsky & Co. were innocent or that the conspiracy did not really exist.

But the combined impact of decades of assertions from supposedly authoritative persons, plus the effects of anticommunism, which incline even scholars who ought to know better towards confirmation bias – believing what they want to believe, i.e. that Stalin framed everybody – has done its work. It has convinced most people who were concerned about the Tukhachevsky Affair at all, to believe the claims that the defendants were innocent.

The Anti-Stalin Paradigm: Lies and Denial

In the professional field of Soviet history it is considered not just inappropriate, but unthinkable, "taboo," to conclude that Stalin did not commit some crime of which he has been previously charged. It doesn't matter how flimsy the evidence – or if, indeed, there ever were any evidence – of Stalin's guilt is. Nor does it matter how good the evidence is that Stalin did not commit the alleged crime. Evidence, literally, does not matter. What matters is "political correctness" – the imperative to condemn Stalin, to find him guilty of the crime alleged. Therefore, this book will be ignored by professionals in the field of Soviet history.

It will also be ignored by adherents of the cult around Leon Trotsky. Trotskyists (as they prefer to be called) uncritically repeat not only all the lies and fabrications that Trotsky himself produced – and we have shown in previous books that Trotsky produced a great many demonstrable lies.

Trotskyists also publicise, as loudly and as widely as they are able, any and all lies and fabrications produced by professional researchers in the field of Soviet history. It does not matter how overtly anticommunist, or even how anti-Trotsky, these researchers may be. As long as they blame Stalin for crimes – any crimes – their fictions are repeated as truths by the Trotsky cult.

Likewise, there are many people who self-identify as socialists and/or as Marxists who will reject the evidence and analysis in this book. Such socialists, sometimes known as social democrats, are ideologically committed to anticommunism and especially to hostility towards Joseph Stalin, about whom they know nothing except falsehoods. Like the Trotskyists, these socialists have been drinking from the poisoned well of mainstream anticommunist scholarship for so long that they have become incapable of thinking rationally and objectively.

But there are far more people who want to know the truth about the first socialist state in world history. Many tens of millions of people around the world respect the role the USSR played, especially during the Stalin period, in organising the fight against the murderous, exploitative imperialism of the so-called "democratic" countries.

They know that the USSR went in little more than a decade from being a backward agricultural society to an industrial power that was able to defeat the fascist invasion that was led by the German Wehrmacht, the most powerful military machine the world had ever known.

They know that the Soviet Union gave unprecedented benefits to working people – cheap rent, transportation, free medical care, guaranteed vacations, maternity leave, sick leave, old age pensions – benefits that, for example, few citizens of the United States of America enjoy. They remember when the Soviet Union, during Stalin's time, promised to push ever forward from socialism toward a classless society of justice – communism.

These people are the crucial force that will bring a better world into being. This book is for them.

Chapter 1. The Shvernik Report - Khrushchev-era Falsifications

At the XXII Party Congress of 17 – 31 October 1961, Nikita Khrushchev oversaw a large-scale attack on Joseph Stalin and his main supporters in the Party leadership. The accusations directed against Stalin were fraudulent – accusations of crimes that Stalin did not commit and, in many cases, that were not crimes at all.

The attacks against Stalin descended to the absurd when Dora Abramovna Lazurkina, an Old Bolshevik who had spent 18 years in the GULAG told the Congress that she had "spoken" with the long-dead Lenin.

"Товарищи! Мы приедем на места, нам надо будет рассказать по-честному, как учил нас Ленин, правду рабочим, правду народу о том, что было на съезде, о чем было сказано, что было вскрыто, рядом с Ильичей остается Сталин.

Я всегда в сердце ношу Ильича и всегда, товарищи, в самые трудные минуты, только потому и выжила, что у меня в сердце был Ильич и я с ним советовалась, как быть. (Аплодисменты). Вчера я советовалась с Ильичем, будто бы он передо мной как живой стоял и сказал: мне неприятно быть рядом со Сталиным, который столько бед принес партии. (Бурные, продолжительные аплодисменты)."

"Comrades. We have arrived at the place where we must tell honestly, as Lenin taught us to do, the truth to the workers, the truth to the people about what has happened and what we have discussed at the Congress. And it would be incredible if, after everything that has been said and disclosed here, Stalin remained beside Lenin.

I always carry Ilich in my heart and always, comrades, in my most difficult moments, the only reason I survived is that Ilich was in my heart and I could consult with him what to do. (Applause) Yesterday I consulted with Ilich, as though he were alive and stood before me and he said: It is unpleasant to be next to Stalin, who brought so many disasters to the Party. (Stormy, prolonged applause.)"

The Congress voted, and Stalin's body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square.

The Shvernik Report is composed of two parts: the "Spravka", or Report, and the "Zapiska," or Memorandum. They were submitted to Khrushchev at different times. We are concerned with the Spravka which, according to the editors' note accompanying it, was completed not later than 26 June 1964. The Spravka is devoted to the rehabilitation of the defendants in the Tukhachevsky Affair; the Zapiska, to many other Party members who had been repressed during the Stalin period.

Neither the Spravka nor the Zapiska was published while the Soviet Union existed. Beginning about 1993, they were published in a number of different journals. Some of these early editions are still cited by historians today. At length they were published in the second volume of the semi-official series of volumes titled Reabilitatsiia. Kak Eto Bylo – "Rehabilitation. How It Happened." The Spravka is on pages 671-788 of this volume. This is by far the most accessible print version of the Shvernik Report and we will use it here. A transcription of the Spravka is also available online.

Both parts of the Shvernik Report are blatant falsifications. At the time the Shvernik Report was first published, in the 1990s, relatively few documents from former Soviet archives had yet been published. So when the Report first appeared, it was widely accepted as truthful. Today we can identify many of these deliberate lies, thanks to the publication of a great many documents from former Soviet archives since the end of the USSR in 1991.

Here we will focus on lies of omission in the Spravka about the Tukhachevsky Trial transcript. The Spravka reproduces sentences taken out of context in order to argue that the defendants were innocent.

First passage: Blyukher and Yakir

... when Blucher, trying to specify the preparations for the defeat of the Red Army aviation in a future war, asked a question about this, Yakir answered: "I really can't tell you anything, apart from what I wrote to the investigation."

When asked by the chairman of the court how the sabotage of combat training expressed itself, Yakir evasively stated: "I wrote about this issue in a special letter."

(RKEB 2, 690)

From these two short passages it appears that Yakir simply refused to answer. In reality, this was not at all the case. Here are the passages in the text of the trial transcript:

Blyukher: Accused Yakir, what exactly were your preparations for the defeat of the Red Army aviation in a future war?

Yakir: I really can't tell you anything, apart from what I wrote to the investigation. I said that, firstly, I imagine in such a way that in parallel with our wrecking work, which only slightly related to aviation, some central organisation carried out very large wrecking cases in aviation, both in matters of materiel (about which I testified in detail), and in a whole series of other questions: staffing, logistics, etc. .. Firstly, the Shepetovsky airdrome was built in a wrecking manner, which was done by an air force engineer named Kikachi, despite the fact that Veingauz was present there and did not notice anything. Secondly, they surely sabotaged in the construction of other airfields. They sabotaged the organisation of the airfield network, which in the vast majority, would either not allow, or would complicate the work of high-speed aviation. Aviation moves at high speeds, needing large take-off spaces, and airfield sites are not growing enough and can put aviation in a difficult position. In addition, much wrecking work was carried out on the material and technical areas, on material and technical supply and personnel. Thirdly, there was a lack of haste and lack of encouragement of the aviation units which were absolutely necessary and without which it was impossible to work during night flights, especially in high-speed aviation. (16-17)

The President: How did the sabotage of combat training manifest itself, aside from limiting aviation night flights?

Yakir: I spoke about this issue in a special letter. I think that there was no need to apply special sabotage, since there were many disorders in this matter. We slowed down work in field high-speed night flight and relied on a similar line coming from Moscow, which did not give us anything. This business was simple, since everything was being rebuilt in our country, and therefore it did not present any difficulties. (19-20)

Second passage: Dybenko and Yakir The Spravka reads:

T. DYBENKO: - When exactly did you personally begin to conduct espionage work in favour of the German General Staff? Yakir: I did not personally and directly begin this work. (RKEB 2, 700)

But in Yakir's confessions we find the following passages:

I heard about espionage twice about the Tukhachevsky about the Red Army, once through Colonel Koestring and the second time through General Runstedt. (л.д.21об)

I understand that I, as a member of the Central Committee, bear more responsibility than all other participants of the conspiracy. With access to all the most secret party and government documents I was aware of all matters and could inform the centre about them. (л.д.31)

In addition, I informed at different times members of the Centre of the Military Conspiracy on the relations in the Ukrainian leadership. For my testimony, this question does not matter for this is a well-known business. (л.д.87об)

That is, Yakir did not transmit information directly to the General Staff of Germany, but passed it to the members of the conspiratorial centre.

We should bear in mind that, in accordance with Soviet law, the crime of espionage is not considered committed when the fact of recruitment is established or when espionage information is transferred to a representative of a foreign state. A crime is considered to have been committed when actions are taken to collect information for the purpose of transferring it. It does not matter to whom it was directly planned to transfer such information – foreign states, counterrevolutionary organisations, or private individuals. Therefore, the accusations of espionage against Yakir were true.

Third passage: Dybenko and Uborevich

Dybenko: Did you directly conduct espionage work with the German General Staff? Uborevich: I never did that. (RKEB 2, 700)

This gives the impression that Uborevich was innocent of any crime. The passage in the trial transcript tells a different story.

Dybenko: Did you directly conduct espionage work with the German General Staff?

Uborevich: I never did that.

Dybenko: Do you consider your work to be espionage and sabotage?

Uborevich: Since 1935, I have been a saboteur [lit. wrecker], a traitor, and an enemy. (78)

Uborevich did refuse to plead guilty of espionage, but he fully confirmed the commission of crimes of treason – something directly opposite to what is suggested in the Spravka. Fourth passage:

Feldman, like Kork, was the "hope" of the investigating authorities ... Feldman's speech occupied 12 pages of the transcript. (RKEB 2, 690)

In reality, the interrogation of Tukhachevsky occupies 35 pages of the transcript; of Yakir, 33 pages; of Kork, 28 pages, and of Fel'dman, 14 pages (not 12). Tukhachevsky and Yakir confessed at much greater length during the trial than the rest of the defendants.

Chapter 2. Evidence that the Defendants' Testimony was Genuine

An important episode in the trial occurs when Tukhachevsky addresses Ul'rikh with a request to give additional details to his confession about sabotage. Ul'rikh agrees.

The President: Have you met with a representative of Polish intelligence in recent years?

Tukhachevsky: No. May I supplement my confession?

The President: Please do.

Tukhachevsky: I would like to add concerning some basic questions of wrecking. (54)

Shortly thereafter Ul'rikh interrupts Tukhachevsky with a leading question.

The President: I have another question. Who, handed over to Polish intelligence some data of the Letichev district, and who issued this assignment?

Tukhachevsky: I personally.

The President; Please add what you wanted. (55)

Tukhachevsky then tries to briefly summarise some of the facts that he had described in detail in his note dated 1 June 1937. Ulrich loses patience with these theoretical remarks:

The President: Please stick more closely to the question than you wanted to talk about. (56)

But Tukhachevsky continues to speak in the same manner. Ul'rikh interrupts him again:

The President: Stick closer to the subject. (56)

Tukhachevsky continues to go on and on. At last, Ul'rikh loses patience:

The President: You are not giving a lecture or a report. You are making a confession. (62)

Tukhachevsky: I am talking about those wrecking cases that we did. These are the main points of wrecking, espionage, and sabotage, which I can tell you about.

I want to assure you that I said all that I know on the basic questions. (62-3)

This fragment of the transcript clearly proves that the trial was not staged. Moreover, for whom could it have been staged? Who could have been a spectator of such a production? The trial took place behind closed doors. The transcript was in secret storage for 75 years. Even after this period it remained inaccessible to researchers for several more years.

The Absence of Any Prepared Scenario for the Trial

Dialogues about who became a participant in the conspiracy and when they did are clear evidence of an absence of any scenario prepared by the investigators and/or by preliminary collusion between the defendants. The judges listen to the parties in order to clarify and correct discrepancies in the testimony.

Dybenko: In 1929, when you were sent to Germany, were you not connected with the German Reichswehr?

Kork: Not yet at that time. Communication was established only in 1931, when I stepped down from the position of an honest Soviet citizen to the position of betrayer and traitor to the motherland, and together with me on the road to struggle against the party followed Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich, and others.

Dybenko: So it can be stated that Uborevich and Yakir, giving confession to the court, falsely stated that they were involved in a counterrevolutionary organisation in 1934?

Kork: Yes, I insist on my confession. I know that they were not involved in the organisation in 1934, but in 1931 simultaneously with me. (101-2)

Judge Ul'rikh then breaks in to check to see what Uborevich has to say about this.

The President: Accused Uborevich, from what year did you consider yourself a member of a military organisation when you joined the fascist military organisation?

Uborevich: Defeatist assignments were set before me in March, 1935, and conversations were conducted from the end of 1934. Prior to this, I did not engage in counterrevolution.

The President: So, the confession of Kork that you entered the organisation in 1931 is wrong? How to explain these confessions of Kork?

Uborevich: I do not know.

Failing to get satisfactory clarification from Uborevich, Ul'rikh turns to Tukhachevsky:

The President: Tell me, Tukhachevsky, how to explain the difference between your confession and Kork's?

Tukhachevsky: I involved Kork in the organisation during the advanced manoeuvres. That was in 1933, and not in 1931, as he claims.

The President: Could it have been conversations of an anti-Soviet character, that was not related to specific actions?

Tukhachevsky: I said that Kork was recruited in 1933. There were conversations of discontent against Voroshilov, against our leadership. There was no concrete talk of a conspiracy until 1933.

The President: Did Kork tell you about the negotiations with Yenukidze concerning the capture of the Kremlin?

Tukhachevsky: Quite right, I informed Yenukidze about this situation after having had a conversation with Gorbachev, and then I informed Kork.

The President: When did you have a conversation about the capture of the Kremlin?

Tukhachevsky: In 1933-1934, when Gorbachev returned. Here, Kork confuses dates. (102-3)

As can be seen, the disagreements are never really cleared up.

Moreover, it is not important for the ultimate outcome of the trial – for the guilt or innocence of any of the defendants – that the defendants agree with one another. Rather, Judge Ul'rikh's purpose is to find out more about the conspiracy. The investigation into the conspiracy, the arrests, interrogations, and trials of more suspects would follow.

We will see below that not all of the military men named by these defendants would be sentenced either to death or to imprisonment. Some would only be cashiered from the service. This is further evidence that the investigation, far from being a frame-up of innocent men, was in reality a serious attempt to uncover a dangerous plot and to save the Red Army and, by doing so, save the Soviet Union.

More about Contradictions in the Defendants' Confessions

In addition to Kork the investigation found that there are some inconsistencies between the testimony of Tukhachevsky and that of Primakov. Such passages indicate the veracity of the testimony.

The President: Accused Tukhachevsky, what do you know about preparing a terrorist attack against Voroshilov?

Tukhachevsky: In a conversation with Primakov I learnt that Turovsky and Shmidt were organising a terrorist group against Voroshilov in the Ukraine. In 1936, from conversations with Primakov, I realised that he was organising a similar group in Leningrad.

The President: Did you hear Tukhachevsky's confessions?

Primakov: Nothing was proposed to me except to organise an armed uprising. (124-5)

Primakov goes on to give more details about his important assignment, in order to explain why Tukhachevsky's statements about him must be incorrect.

Primakov: I had the following basic instruction: Until 1934 I worked for the most part as an organiser, in gathering Trotskyite cadres. In 1934, I received an order from Piatakov to break off with the group of Dreitser and old Trotskyites, who were assigned to prepare terrorist acts, and I myself was to prepare, in the military district where I worked, to foment an armed uprising that would be called forth either by a terrorist act or by military action. This was the assignment I was given. The military Trotskyite organisational centre considered this assignment to be very important and its importance was stressed to me. I was told to break any personal acquaintance with old Trotskyites with whom I was in contact. This is the reason why I moved away from Dreitser's group, this is why I worked at the assignment that had been given to me. (125-6)

It is important to note that the contradictions in the testimony of the trial defendants prove that they did not tailor their testimony according to a prepared scenario. Equally important, it is clear that the prosecution did not falsify the record of the trial – the transcript – in order to eliminate inconsistencies.

During the preliminary investigation, in order to find out the reasons for the contradictions in the testimony of Kork and Tukhachevsky, the investigators drew on the testimony of Yenukidze, Gorbachev, and Primakov. The investigators approached the study of such contradictions more thoroughly than the future authors of the Shvernik Report, which passes as certification of "rehabilitation."

If all the testimonies of Tukhachevsky and others had been imposed on them by a team of investigators, where did these contradictions come from? How could they survive before the trial?

The presence of these contradictions, the attempts of investigators and judges to understand them, constitutes the strongest evidence that the persons under investigation and the defendants testified as they chose to testify – that is, gave mainly truthful testimonies. At the same time, everyone described the events as they remembered them, and not in the way that the investigators and judges would have liked.